Biomechanics of DNA: Rotational Oscillations of Bases

DOI

10.1142/S1402925111001623How to use a DOI?

Keywords

DNA; mechanical model; two coupled pendulum oscillations

Abstract

In the present paper we investigate the rotational oscillations of the nitrous bases that form a central base pair in a short DNA fragment consisting of three base pairs. For this purpose we use a simple mechanical model of the DNA fragment where the bases are imitated by pendulums, and the interactions between the bases are imitated by springs. It is suggested that the pendulums of the central pair oscillate, and the pendulums of neighboring pairs located at the edges of the fragment are immovable. The model takes into account the hydrogen bonds between the bases in pairs, the stacking interactions between neighboring base pairs and the helicity of the DNA structure. We derived the Lagrangian of the model system and the nonlinear equations of motions. Parameters of the equations were considered in details. We found solutions of the equations in the homogeneous case when the fragment contained only identical base pairs: Adenine-Thymine (AT) or Guanine-Cytosine (GC). The trajectories of the model system in the configuration space were also constructed in this approximation.

Copyright

© 2011 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press and Taylor & Francis

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - JOUR
AU  - L. V. Yakushevich
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/01/07
TI  - Biomechanics of DNA: Rotational Oscillations of Bases
JO  - Journal of Nonlinear Mathematical Physics
SP  - 449
EP  - 461
VL  - 18
IS  - Supplement 2
SN  - 1776-0852
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1142/S1402925111001623
DO  - 10.1142/S1402925111001623
ID  - Yakushevich2021
ER  -